Natus Vincere, the the top team in the world ranking and favorites at the PGL Major in Stockholm, cruised through the Legends stage with a 3-0 record and no maps dropped, coming out on top in matches against Heroic, Virtus.pro and the world’s No. 2 team, NIP.
Team building and work in the server are the keys to NAVI’s great form
We caught up with Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov after his team’s clean victory over the Swedes to talk about the keys for Natus Vincere‘s Swiss stage success, as well as how the team is keeping its great form throughout the year as they look to peak at the first Major in two years.
You got a clean 3-0 in the Swiss stage, didn’t even drop a map. How’s the team feeling right now?
Everyone’s happy right now because we went 3-0 and we have time to prepare for the playoffs and watch the other games. We were working a lot on our bootcamp before this.
The first two matches in best-of-one at the Major is not the best system, the first day was a really nervous day, so we were very happy about going 2-0 because that meant we had three chances in the best-of-threes. Everything is working for us, we fixed our problems on some maps and things are working better now.
Anywhere you look people have NAVI as the favorites to take it all. Do you see yourselves as the team to beat?
We understand everyone talking about us as favorites, but we’re trying to not have pressure because of it. We understand every team wants to beat us but we’re just focusing on our game and our problems the same as in tournaments we played before. We just tried to evolve game by game to make playoffs.
So just working on keeping the pressure low.
Yeah, we have our goal and we’re trying to do it.
You said you worked quite a bit before the event, how did that go?
It was a two week bootcamp and we added some new things with our psychologist. We go on a walk every day as a team in the morning after we wake up. We’re doing that at the tournament, too, our psychologist isn’t with us now but on the bootcamp she was working with everyone.
We have two psychologists, Gleb and Marina, and we were working on having a strong mentality. This is great because we spend more time as a team, trying to understand each player’s weaknesses and trying to help every player.
Do you think you’re at your peak form right now?
Yeah, I think this is the best point for us, and it’s the best year for NAVI, but we don’t want to stop, we just want more. We understand that we can win every tournament, we know how to win, so we’re trying to evolve to try and have the longest era we can.
Can you give me the key moments of the NIP match. Starting out very strong on the T side of Nuke, then closing it out on Overpass.
We had a really big economy since the beginning on the T side, it was $16,000 on four players at some points. We had to adapt because they were being very aggressive on the CT side, they were trying to push.
Before Overpass we understood that sometimes I had to call what we should do in the round, but that maybe they would try to kill us in aggressive zones. So B1ad3 talked to me to be focused on how to go in these zones and not die, going together and using our nades.
NIP are having a great performance now with device, they’re so hype right now, top 2 in the world. They’re playing really well, but we adapted and the T side of Nuke was really good. Overpass is a map they always pick against us, but we worked on it in bootcamp as I said before and now it’s pretty good for us.
You just beat the second team in the world ranking 2-0. Moving into the playoffs, who’s going to give you a run for your money?
Oh, G2 are in really great form. NiKo, individually, has performed really well this tournament and we also saw it in practice. Maybe Vitality can make it to playoffs after starting 0-2. NIP, Vitality and maybe Gambit.
As I said in one of our vlogs, every team at this tournament can be really hyped because it has been two years without a Major and everybody wants to win this, so no game is going to be easy in playoffs. It doesn’t matter who we face in the playoffs, every team can be dangerous for us.
s1mple is sitting in the middle now, he’s being pretty vocal too. How is that dynamic working out and why the setup?
Yeah, it’s because Perfecto is lurking so when we play T-side I can see his monitor and s1mple is playing with the core so he can look at electronic and me, we’re sitting close. It’s not so much for s1mple, it’s better for me to see the core and the lurker to see half of the map.
Any players or teams that have surprised you so far?
Of course, Entropiq. They showed really great results in the first stage of the Major and they went 2-0 before the match against G2, which was not easy for them. Mirage was really close and they’re really feeling it.
It’s like my story in QB.Fire, when we made that comeback against mousesports. It’s the same energy, these young guys at a Major for the first time, they have the experienced coach, hooch, who was my first captain in my first team. So I’m really happy for them and they really surprised us.
Talking about the bad side it was GODSENT, I was thinking they would go through to the second stage, but it’s 0-3. We played a practice against them and I saw their results, for me they were going to make it through to the second stage, but unlucky.
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